Game Discussion: Rocket League Forum

Rocket League Multi-Genre Discussion

thanks clown, if just sports can be added, i agree. I forgot about the basketball part. But i think the only way it doesn't play as football is the ball isn't kicked by feet, but by a car & humans cant run up a wall & ceiling.

It doesn't fit the definition for a Sports genre game though (emphasis mine):

Sports games model an existing sport, complete with a set of rules and organized competition. They do not necessarily have to be simulations and may feature actions which are over-the-top, physically impossible, or not allowed within the real life activity.

Rocket League, as awesome as it would be, does not model an existing sport. I acknowledge that the definition allows for "over-the-top, physically impossible" games to exist, but that is best applied to something like NFL Blitz Achievements where it is based on an existing sport with over the top features, not starting from the over the top features like Rocket League. Furthermore, the rule-set of Rocket League is thus: "Get the object into your opponent's goal while preventing it from going into your own goal", with no additional rules. That hardly qualifies as a "set of rules and organized competition".

Many sports in real life are based on defending one goal while scoring on another, however that is far too generic a description to start prescribing a "Sports" tag to anything that hits that broad scope without coming close to the other aspects of the definition.

As has been noted by others, Sports can be tagged in alone at this point (unlike Shooter, which remains leaderboard-only and mandates FPS and/or TPS), so that is viable now.

PNH makes a good point, however even simple rules are rules. And there is organized competition (the game is an eSport now [not that I'm arguing sport because eSport, merely as a response to meeting a certain competition threshold]).

I think it is too different from Soccer to warrant the Soccer tag. Or any other specific sports tag. Vehicles, different sized teams than normal, major rules changes (e.g., offsides). We can be liberal with an interpretation on Sports in general, but this is different enough that I think it's reasonable that a fan of soccer games might actually not like this. So I'd leave specific sports out, especially since it has expanded into loose iterations on other games (basketball, ice hockey).

However, I would be fine backing Sports + Automobile (rather than the existing Action + Automobile). It's trying to be a sport. It wants to be one. I'm okay with recognizing it as such, broadly. But, as I noted back with the last disagreements, I think it's too far from specific sports for me to agree to tag with a "real" one, but close enough to emulating sports in general that I could support a broad tag, if that makes sense (versus #IDARB Achievements which I think is too far from actual sports of any form, to bring another creative title that some argue is a Sports game). Now that Sports alone (ignore Auto in the discussion, since that isn't really controversial) can be tagged, it changes my calculation somewhat. But I admit I've always been on the fence on how to treat this one.

I guess this comes down to how the Genre Team wants to implement "Sports" as a genre: broad (anything resembling a competition) vs narrow (based off a real sport, even if a silly over-the-top depiction of one). Personally I favor the narrow side, since I think going broad risks including too many games, and your average Sports player is going to be playing because they want to emulate/goof with what they see in real life, not just because they like the competition aspect of it.

I guess this comes down to how the Genre Team wants to implement "Sports" as a genre: broad (anything resembling a competition) vs narrow (based off a real sport, even if a silly over-the-top depiction of one).

Yes, that's fundamentally the issue. I personally don't feel strongly on this one, and have said as much to the other GT members. Just need to know so I can try to be consistent on the instances we'll see this situation.

Posted on 22 July 17 at 12:21, Edited on 22 July 17 at 12:22 by TheAnonymity

just naming the elephant in the room, as rocket league states, the name of the sport is "soccar;" soccer + cars. the action should definitely stay, since you can crash into other vehicles and blow them up.

Posted on 01 September 17 at 03:18, Edited on 01 September 17 at 03:19 by BigD The Chief

so even though the developers call it a "soccar" game, soccer with cars, we cant call it a sports game. So take the arcade game Real Steel for example, its listed under boxing, but its robots. Isnt that a little silly & over the top ?? Besides the movie, when have we seen robots boxing ? Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots ?

The genre definition for Sports explicitly states it models an existing sport. As awesome as it would be for this to be an existing sport, having cars hitting balls into goals is not something that actually exists in our world

We could probably do this now as the rules have been changed to allow Sports to be added as a genre without additional ones. I would recommend having it set as Sports and Automobile though as the game has both football and basketball-styled games they still dont play like an actual football or basketball game.

Agreed. I think sports + automobile is appropriate. The sports tag covers the ball play which resembles but is not faithful to existing games. Other sports games do not have the action tag so I recommend removing it.

Alg, misfit, and I have agreed that Sports + Automobile seems the best fit for this unique title. The change has now been made. Thanks all.

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Posted on 19 July 19 at 17:20

Nyte Rayne 2 has registered their disagreement about the genres applied to this game

Last update on this was Sports + Automobile. I believe automobile got dropped when that genre was completely abandoned for a short while, but never reinstated. I'm pretty sure that driving cars is still an important aspect of this game.